Baby on the Way

“He’s a man – he’s my man – and we’re a family,” Alves gushed months later. “He’s the best dad he can be – 100 percent hands-on.” McConaughey called his leading lady “the love of my life.”

However, marriage wasn’t on McConaughey’s mind. “It’s just not something I plan on doing right now, and that I feel like I need to do right now,” he told reporters in April 2009 while promoting his romantic comedy, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. “It’s not an institution I’m against at all. I’m actually for it, believe in it and have seen it actually be very, very healthy for many relationships.”

Kissing and Telling

The couple rung in the New Year with a new baby in 2010: daughter Vida.

And with an acting career and a family life to balance, the actor was taking his romance with Alves to new heights.

“We went up to 3,000 feet and I had on hiking shoes and I was all set up and ready to go,” he said in February 2011 about a trip with his ladylove to French Polynesia. “[Alves] was wearing Havaianas sandals and a white skirt. I came down to the bottom of that hill afterward and had blood on me, [all] muddy and that girl didn’t have a speck of dust on her.”

The bachelor-turned-family man told PEOPLE in March 2011 that he was learning Portuguese, Alves’s native language that she grew up speaking in Brazil.

And perhaps his favorite word in Portuguese sheds some light on the romance between him and his now-fiancé. “Beijos,” is his favorite expression, he said, which translates to “kisses” in English.